Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Great Upheaval on Shen Zhou Continent, the Collapsing Great Tang

Early autumn in Chang An. Leaves drifted down, one after another, soft as sighs.

In the Imperial Temple, incense smoke curled and rose.

Inside the hall stood a woman of noble grace. A phoenix gown trailed along the floor, and even its heavy folds could not hide the richness of her figure. Her beauty was unearthly—snow-pale skin, fine brows, a face fit to make poets forget their lines—yet exhaustion dulled her eyes, carving quiet shadows beneath them.

She was Li Wan, the new ruler, crowned only three months ago.

The second empress in history. The second time Great Tang had placed the heavens in a woman’s hands.

Unlike the Ze Tian Great Sage Empress who had shaken the world, Li Wan’s ascent stirred no great outcry. It came almost as if it had always been waiting for her.

Fifty years ago, the Heavenly Dao had suffered a violent upheaval. Spiritual energy revived. The world overturned. Powers rose like storms. Great Tang, already fractured, slid toward collapse.

Li Wan—most gifted of the Li Tang imperial clan in martial talent—had watched seven years pass, twelve emperors rise and fall, and finally she had struck. With fearless resolve, she launched a palace coup and took control of the Golden Throne Hall.

Her first act was to purge the eunuchs.

For twenty years, eunuchs had strangled the court. In a single sweep, their rule vanished into smoke. The festering sickness that had lingered since the An Lushan Rebellion was cut out at last.

But that was all she could do.

No matter how capable she was, she could not hold back a world that was already breaking.

Beyond the borders, the Barbarian State burned with arrogance, as if favored by the Heavenly Dao itself. It occupied the richest lands, where spiritual energy pooled thick and strong.

Shen Zhou was worse still. In only a few decades—aside from Great Tang’s own gods of soil and grain—Western Shu, Southern Chu, Northern Liang, You Yan, Zhao, and Eastern Wu had all proclaimed themselves emperors.

The Martial World ran wild. Strength trampled law. Morals and ethics meant nothing before a clenched fist.

“Li Wan,” the empress whispered to herself, voice low and heavy, “you want to turn back the collapsing tide, to hold up the falling hall… but even if I give everything, I cannot do it.”

She had the will to save a dynasty. She had the courage required of a ruler who wanted to drag a nation back from the brink.

But the times had changed.

The officials in court had already turned to ashes inside. They had long since stopped trying. They waited only to see where the Nine Provinces Cauldron would fall.

Whoever won would be served.

After the An Lushan Rebellion, Great Tang’s fate had been spent.

She might be a doomed ruler.

Li Wan did not fear later generations cursing her, or nailing her to a pillar of shame in the histories. She feared something else entirely—that the Great Tang of endless glory had become a bubble that popped the moment she reached for it.

She looked out the window.

The sky above Chang An was always dark gray, like someone had thrown a filthy cloth over it. No matter how hard she pulled, it would not come away.

Once, ten thousand nations had bowed to Great Tang.

Now livelihoods withered, and the Empire could barely manage to defend itself.

Li Wan walked to the spirit tablets and offered incense. Then she stood still before the portraits, gaze steady, breath quiet.

The first portrait was Emperor Gao Zu Tai Wu.

He had overthrown the Sui Dynasty and founded Great Tang.

The second was Emperor Tai Zong.

Heavenly Khagan. In Li Wan’s heart, only the First Emperor of Qin stood above him—one of the only two legendary emperors in the Central Plains’ long history.

The third was Gao Zong.

A ruler who kept what had been built. Though commoners argued about his character, he began the Yonghui prosperity and destroyed Goguryeo and the Western Turks.

Li Wan stopped long before the fourth portrait.

Ze Tian Great Sage Empress.

The only empress since the dawn of time. A woman who had burned her name into the histories with solitary courage. She had ruled with blood, had even lost land—but she had also reinforced the An Xi Four Garrisons and truly commanded the Western Regions.

“An Xi…” Li Wan murmured, bitterness tightening her throat.

The old brilliance had long since been stripped away. Even the He Xi Corridor was gone—how could An Xi still exist?

Those frontier soldiers had died far from the Central Plains. Decades later, their bones still could not be carried home.

“The Li imperial clan has failed you,” Li Wan whispered. “The gods of soil and grain have failed you.”

She passed Tang Zhong Zong and Tang Rui Zong without stopping. Those two ancestors lived forever under Ze Tian’s shadow; no amount of decoration could disguise their mediocrity.

Her eyes settled on another portrait.

Xuan Zong.

“Li Long Ji…” The empress sighed silently.

A great part of today’s misery was his doing.

The An Lushan Rebellion. The warlord governors. The shattering of the Kaiyuan golden age. The long road to ruin.

Xuan Zong had a dazzling beginning and a brilliant middle—then an ending so ugly it made the whole tale hard to bear. His portrait seemed to wear dust like shame.

Li Wan had rarely seen an emperor with such violent contrast in one life. The Kaiyuan golden age he built would stand at history’s peak and stun later generations into awe.

Yet the rebellion he helped unleash threw the Empire into an abyss that felt bottomless.

“One part merit,” Li Wan said softly, “nine parts fault. That’s what the court says behind closed doors…”

She paused a long time. Then her voice sharpened like a blade.

“I agree.”

Was it unfilial to judge an ancestor so harshly?

Perhaps.

But Li Wan could not bring herself to sing Xuan Zong’s praises while her people starved, while Shen Zhou was bullied by the Barbarian State, while the Central Plains decayed into lawlessness and moral rot.

So much of it began with him.

“Emperor Tai Zong,” she said, turning away from the rest and fixing her gaze on the portrait of Emperor Tai Zong, Li Shi Min, “if you were alive, could you save this?”

No answer came.

Could anyone, truly?

The question itself felt cruel.

Great Tang was like a patient dying slowly. It would die. The only question was how long it could endure before the last breath.

“Where is the first light of hope?” Li Wan’s voice trembled. “Who can tell me there is still Great Tang backbone in this world? How many troopers are still willing to fight for Great Tang?”

She pressed her lips together, swallowed the grief, and left the Imperial Temple.

…

Wind howled over the desert. Clouds rolled like dark waves.

Kucha City—scarred, battered, and alone—looked impossibly small beneath the vast sky.

Inside the only official hall that still carried a trace of authority, the room was packed with gaunt women and children, with a few crippled white-haired elders scattered among them.

The air was silent. Pressed. Heavy.

A map lay spread on the table.

In sixty years, Kucha City had taken many maps from foreign corpses. None had ever been so clear, so detailed.

This one had been found—still stained with blood—on the blond, blue-eyed leader.

The old woman’s smile froze.

Could anyone imagine it?

After sixty years of waiting, she finally knew Great Tang still existed. The single character Tang on the map held her eyes like a hook.

And then she saw the territory.

And helplessness seeped into her bones.

“Heaven…” she croaked. “How can it be like this?”

Women broke into sobs. They could not accept Great Tang’s fall.

Once, Prosperous Tang had drawn ten thousand nations to bow.

Now it crouched behind a pitiful scrap of land—three prefectures at most. The map was littered with other states: Northern Liang, Southern Chu, You Yan, and more.

The Barbarian State dominated the entire Western Regions, its territory stretching to Mo Bei. By its own strength, it could contend with Shen Zhou Continent.

In the dead silence, the old woman forced the words out. “Great Tang is still there. Then our sixty years mattered.”

“But look at it!” a woman shouted, face flushed with rage and grief. “Look how miserable it is!”

Her voice rose, shaking the hall. “Is there anything under heaven harder than what we endured? Sixty years—no reinforcements. Growing our own grain. Never tasting even a single cake, never wearing a thread of brocade! Watching children grow up, watching them die on the walls, burying them with our own hands!”

Her sobs turned into a hoarse scream. “Sixty years—twenty-two thousand of the An Xi Army! Did even one surrender? Did even one get captured? Not once did we think of giving up. If Great Tang once had ten thousand nations bowing, then why—why should it fall to this?”

The hall rang with the sound of despair refusing to kneel.

She had wanted to see an army-rich, general-strong Prosperous Tang. She had wanted to carry the spirit tablets home to the Central Plains. She had wanted the court to send troops—wanted them to reach An Xi.

Every hope was crushed.

Gu Chang An stood in the corner, silent as stone.

History had changed so completely from what he remembered that it left him unsteady.

Only one thing remained the same.

The Tang Dynasty that had once ruled ten thousand nations was dying. Like cancer, decay spread through it, relentless and unstoppable.

“Chang An,” the old woman said at last, stepping toward him and gripping his hand with surprising strength, “now we have a map. Go to Chang An.”

“I won’t.” Gu Chang An’s refusal came clean and hard.

Her face chilled. She trembled, not with age now, but with something sharper. “Do you want the spirits of the An Xi Army to never find peace? An Xi—find peace!”

“They want Chang An to know,” Gu Chang An said, voice tight, “they want the court to know—An Xi held for sixty years. An Xi never retreated for sixty years. Kucha City never fell for sixty years. Great Tang land still remains!”

His throat worked, as if swallowing glass. Still he shook his head. “As long as I’m here, the city stands. If I leave, the land is lost. And you…”

He stopped, but his meaning hung in the air.

He could still fight. He would not allow himself to stop before he had done everything he could. Losing the city meant more than death—it meant slaughter. It meant the women and children behind him being carved apart by foreign blades.

“Go, Chang An,” another woman pleaded. “Only you can cross the endless desert. Only you can reach Chang An.”

They all understood the truth.

Kucha City could not be held forever.

They wanted this child to live.

“Chang An,” voices rose one after another, “go. Fulfill An Xi’s sixty-year wish. Let the Central Plains know the spirit of the An Xi Army.”

Gu Chang An looked around at them—at the gaunt faces, the children too young to be old and already too old to be children.

Then he spoke, gentle and firm. “Grandfathers. Grandmothers. Everyone.”

His voice did not waver.

“Chang An will not retreat. As long as I’m here, the city stands. Guarding this land is my mission. It is the whole meaning of my life.”

Before anyone could answer—

Thud.

The old woman dropped to her knees.

She was the widow of Protector-General Guo. Nearly eighty years old.

And she knelt to beg.

“Grandmother…” Gu Chang An lunged forward in alarm, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and hauling her up. Fury—rare, raw fury—flashed across his face. “Even if you force me, it won’t work. Guarding this city was my vow when I was ten. It will be my vow at twenty, at thirty, even at eighty!”

He drew a breath, sharp as a cut. “As long as I’m not dead, I will not abandon Kucha City. I will not abandon the last piece of Shen Zhou—the Central Plains’ last strip of land in the Western Regions!”

The hall went silent.

The old woman swallowed the bitterness rising in her throat.

Why make it this hard?

“I’ll go!”

A hoarse voice sounded from outside the hall.